John Martin

John Martin painted catastrophe on a colossal scale. His pictures show biblical and imaginary disasters, collapsing cities, floods and fire from heaven, with vast architecture, lightning filled skies and crowds of tiny figures dwarfed by what is happening around them.

Born in Haydon Bridge, Northumberland, he trained as a heraldic painter on coaches and then with an Italian painter, Boniface Musso, with whom he moved to London in 1806. Belshazzar’s Feast (1820) made him famous, and five thousand people paid to see it. He produced mezzotints for Milton’s Paradise Lost, and in his last years painted a triptych of The Last Judgement, The Great Day of His Wrath and The Plains of Heaven, now in Tate Britain. He also drew up schemes for London’s water supply and sewers.

In Belshazzar’s Feast and Fallen Angels in Hell, look at the dramatic lighting and the enormous sense of depth.